Authors: Denise Kahn
It was Ephraim, the Israeli MOSSAD agent, who understood all of Davina’s hints. They listened to the tape of the conversation between Davina and her father over and over. “Bravo,” Ephraim said quietly.
William Walters looked up. “What?”
“Rerun the tape,” Ephraim ordered. “My friend, I see your daughter takes after you. She is very clever.”
William shut his eyes and opened them quickly as if the light could block out the memory of Davina’s scream. “How do you mean?”
“She said King Tut. She also said she would like to see you in about an hour. We know they flew out of Cairo. If she is right, and I expect that she is, we know they are in a radius of an hour’s flying time from Cairo. King Tut means they were headed for the Valley of the Kings. That’s where King Tutankhaman’s tomb is. That fits in with what we know about these fanatics and where they hide out.”
“You think you know where they are?” Walters asked, thinking this was too good to be true.
“We are pretty sure,” the younger Israeli said, going to the map. “They are most probably here,” he said, pointing at an indistinct spot in the beige desert.
“Good news finally,” General Dickinson said. “Now what do we do?”
“We are a little ahead of the game,” Ephraim said. “I need to make a few phone calls myself.”
At 1900 hours Ephraim presented his plan as he sipped from a large mug of black coffee. “Two dozen men will leave tonight by aircraft. They will parachute here,” he said, pointing to a large X on the map. They will land thirty miles from the location, otherwise the plane will be heard.”
“How the hell they gonna get to where they need to be?” Dickinson demanded.
“They will carry hang gliders.”
“Hang gliders?” Dickinson asked, incredulous. “Where in hell they gonna take off from, Ephraim? There’s nothing out there but fucking sand!”
“There are dunes in the desert,” Ephraim replied, “some are high enough for a hang glider to take off from. No problem.”
“Continue, Ephraim, please,” Walters said.
“They will fly themselves as close to the location as possible, otherwise they would lose time and exhaust themselves walking. At 0230 hours they will have arrived two miles from the camp, far enough so that if there are guards, they can take them out. At 0330 three men will reconnoiter the camp, set plastiques and warn the hostages of this operation. At 0400 hours they will silence the perimeter guards with far-range guns that have infrared telescopes and silencers. We are presuming that there are between one hundred and one hundred and twenty terrorists at that camp. That is a ratio of about one to five. Of course our commandos will have the element of surprise.”
Ephraim paused and finished his coffee. He looked at Walters. This was their only chance. He knew Walters knew that. Ephraim would not be alive had it not been for William Walters, risking his own life for him. Walters was OSS at the time. He, Ephraim and three others flew out of a RAF base in England. Their mission: to infiltrate Nazi territory. Only two of them, Walters and Ephraim, lived. But that was another war, another place, Ephraim told himself.
“The operation should take no more than forty-five minutes,” Ephraim continued. “That would make it 0445. Sunrise is at 0449. At that time, two helicopters will be arriving on the scene. One with more troops, the second, manned by a special medical team in case there are wounded. The helicopters will take off shortly after. This, then, gentlemen, will conclude Operation Nightingale.” He again turned to Walters. “The men are on standby and scheduled to leave—I need your approval and your blessing, William.”
Operation Nightingale. William Walters repeated the words to himself. Yes, the savior and the singing bird. That is a good name. We must get our nightingales and their friends out of there. He nodded to Dickinson and Duvalier.
“Yeah,” the older general said. “Do it.”
“Yes,” Duvalier said.
The DC-3 pilot Adam Spencer thought they could escape under cover of darkness, although it was not a perfect plan. They might be killed but at least some of them might survive such an escape. If they could make it to the hidden airplane, and he knew the chances for this were not good, they would have to remove the camouflage, and that would take time, time they did not have. But even if by some miracle they did manage to do that, he worried that the plane would not start because there must be half the desert in the engines from their landing. But if by chance the plane did start, where was the runway? There wasn’t one. He presumed that they would rebuild it when they needed it again, if ever they did. Adam considered his situation, thinking back to all the tight spots he had been in. Maybe this was the worst, he thought. This wasn’t just he and his buddy B.A. running for their lives through the rice paddies in Vietnam. There were six of them here and only he had been through a war. What would B.A. do? He asked himself. B.A. would know what to do.
Adam’s co-pilot Eric Shannon had said almost nothing since he first looked into the barrel of the Uzi, probably his first Uzi, Adam thought. But actually, none of them spoke much. They were all very hungry and thirsty. Now they thought about food and water as well as their lives. When two of the armed men guarding their tent came inside their second night in the desert, they thought it was to bring them food or at least water.
“Who is the singer?” one of them asked, looking from Davina to Monique.
The women looked at each other and both spoke at once. “I am.”
The man laughed. Unlike the others, he wore a different kind of head cloth, the kind of the Afghan steppes. “Come,” he said.
“Now, wait a minute…” Jacques began nervously.
“Easy boy,” Spencer warned him quietly.
“What do you want with my wife?” Jacques demanded.
“
Juwaztuk
? Your wife?” the other man said. He stared at Monique and grinned obscenely.
“She’s not going anywhere without me!” Jacques said.
The man shrugged. “OK. Come.”
Spencer saw that Alejandro was about to lunge at the guard. “Easy, easy,” Spencer whispered. He put a hand on Alejandro’s shoulder. They watched helplessly as the women and Jacques were escorted out of the tent into the darkness that they could only wonder at.
“Maybe they just want to be entertained,” Eric shrugged. “They know she’s a singer.” He was trying to be helpful but even he knew his words rang hollow.
The women and Jacques were made to enter a tent filled with acrid blue smoke. Fayed and the giant of a man with the gold tooth lounged on cushions, taking turns at the
hookah
. Fayed’s red checkered head cloth now hung around his neck and his eyes were glassy and dilated.
“Monique Ravel, the singer, welcome, and you have friends?” Fayed’s words had lost their usual clipped distinction. He was obviously stoned and presumably, the giant was as well. It was more difficult to tell with him. “Please,” Fayed said, swinging out both arms, “please sit down.”
The three captors sat on cushions. For what seemed like a long time, they listened to only the gurgling water pipe as Fayed and the big man continued to suck at the
hookah
and blow smoke. Finally Fayed spoke. “The entertainment should prove to be interesting.”
Davina could not bear the silence any longer. “You expect us to sing?”
Fayed nodded.
“We are very thirsty and we are hungry,” Davina said. “When I talk to my father again, I will tell him that you do not have any honor. You’ve broken your word.”
Fayed slapped Davina hard across her face. “Bitch!” he yelled, straddling her. He yanked her up by the front of her shirt and punched her in the stomach. Davina doubled over on all fours.
Monique gasped. “That was not necessary,” she said, trying to conceal her fright. “We have done nothing but obey your orders.”
Fayed grabbed Monique’s blouse and tore it off her body. Jacques lunged, but Ahmed, one of the guards who had brought them to Fayed’s tent, got to him first with the butt of his rifle. They heard cracking of rib bones. Jacques went down hard gasping for air. Ahmed was going to hit him again but Fayed stopped him. “
La, la
, no, no,” he said, “let him watch.”
Monique, her breasts exposed, began to shake uncontrollably.
“
Monique!
” Jacques cried out and Ahmed’s rifle came down again, this time breaking his arm. The Frenchman screamed.
“Jacques, please, stop,” Monique begged him.
Davina, still on her knees, closed her eyes. She thought she was going to be sick. Jacques’ cries were unbearable. And Monique…
0230 hours. Operation Nightingale was in its second phase. Two dozen Israeli commandos glided silently through the moonless night on hang gliders towards their destination. They wore dark gray hoods and the same color fatigues. The terrorist encampment was easy to spot. The commandos followed the glow of the campfires, landing about two miles away. They were on schedule to the minute. They piled up their gliders over a small explosive set to go off at 0500 hours.
Adam Spencer was the first to see the blade cutting through the tent. He brought a finger to his lips and Alejandro and Eric stood to Adam’s side, ready for whatever was coming. They had nothing but their wits and their hands to defend themselves. They hardly dared breathe as they watched a head in a gray hood poke through the slit that had been made in the tent. Spencer grabbed the head and yanked hard. He was ready with a punch when a woman’s voice said: “Wait, we’ve come to rescue you.” The commando took off her hood and her long blond hair spilled out. Her blue eyes quickly took in the situation. “Shalom.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Spencer inhaled, figuring the soldier was about five foot nothing and he had almost smashed that lovely face.
“My name is Ruth,” she said. “Listen carefully. We don’t have much time.”
Ruth Rosenblum was the only woman on the mission. She was rated as one of the best commandos in all of Israel. There was no one who did not respect her. She quickly proceeded to tell them about the operation and in turn gathered the information she needed from them. She left two minutes later, blond hair back in the hood.
When Jacques opened his eyes again, he did not know where he was. A woman was crying. It was Davina. She lay doubled over, holding her stomach, on the carpet next to him. Then he remembered, and he could do nothing.
Ahmed pushed Monique down to her knees, roughly tore the rest of her clothes off. He pulled her head back, ready to thrust into her. Jacques prayed to lose consciousness.
Davina stumbled to her feet. “No, you can’t do this!” The big man grabbed her and flung her down, brought his hand up and slapped her. He then went over to Monique and Ahmed. He lifted his gown. He wore nothing under it. They would take turns. He dropped the knife from his belt next to Monique who was still on her knees.
Her screams resounded throughout the camp and petrified the hostages’ hearts.
They’re killing her, Davina thought, and with every ounce of strength she had left, threw herself onto the big man’s back, digging her nails into him. Fayed pulled her off by her hair and pinned her down to the ground, pressing his lips roughly to hers, grotesquely flicking his tongue back and forth in her mouth. Davina caught it and bit down as hard as she could. Fayed, cursing, rolled off of her as blood came gushing out.
Davina grabbed the knife the big man had put down. Blood was running out of Monique’s mouth and down her legs. She was losing consciousness. The man was still ramming her. He hadn’t noticed Davina next to him and the next thing he felt was the blade entering his body. He fell over and saw the face of the American woman who had thrust his own knife into his back.
The Israeli commandos placed explosive charges at each of the twelve tents. The soldiers of this unit had worked together for the past two years, day in and day out. By smell, step or sound, they knew exactly who each was and what he or she was doing. They were like an extension of each other. Their mission was more complicated because the hostages had been separated. ”Two women and one man are in the main tent,” Ruth reported. “They might be dead.”
“Right, we go now,” the commanding officer said. It was 0350 hours. They were still on schedule. The best sharpshooters took out the perimeter guards with silencers and moved further in. Each tent had two guards. They too were taken out with the silencers. The only terrorists left were the ones inside and they seemed to be asleep. Now the commandos positioned themselves at the entrance to each tent and waited for their commander’s signal.
At the main tent, Colonel Yuval Shamir held a finger to his lips. Complete silence. He wanted to keep it that way. It had worked miraculously well so far. He raised his hand and nodded at each of them. When he lowered his hand, the commandos bolted into their respective tents. Shamir, Ben Sned, the second in command, and Ruth went into the leader’s tent.
Ahmed saw them first. He reached for his gun but the trio opened fire before he had a chance. Two bullets pierced him silently and he collapsed. The big man was dead, Davina had killed him. Fayed was sitting on top of Davina, a knife in his hand, ready to kill her, but he flew back with the impact of the bullets. He lay crumpled on the ground in his own blood.